American Outlaw - Jesse James [120]
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, finally. “You’re going to be . . . fine.”
My whole life, I’d always lived full throttle, placing myself in positions of danger over and over, as if that was my right. If I lived, if I died, that was my business. But there was something different about what I’d created with Sandy. To see her so shaken there, it really made me evaluate things on a different level—it made me realize that I had a responsibility to the woman I loved to stay alive, and live sanely.
“Look, I’m done,” I told her, a few weeks later. “That NASCAR racing is for suckers.”
Sandy didn’t try to hide her happiness. “Thank goodness,” she sighed. “I don’t want you in a wheelchair.”
“Yeah, me neither, I guess,” I said. “Not unless you’re in the one next to me.”
“Ooh, a cute wheelchair duo,” she said, laughing. “Tempting. Pink, perhaps?”
“They’d make a romantic comedy out of it,” I said. “You could star in it. Keanu would play me.”
“Oh, be quiet!” Sandy laughed. “I’m just happy you’re going to be around for a while. You really had us worried for a second.” Her face grew more serious. “I mean . . . I love you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
——
That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I lay in bed next to Sandy, feeling her warm, innocent body next to me.
Why had I really crashed? I wondered. Was it really the car’s fault? Or had it been a mistake I’d made?
I was getting older. When I stared into the mirror in the morning, a thirty-seven-year-old face stared back at me. I didn’t exactly mind aging, but damn, it sure felt like a harsh surprise some days. It seemed like only yesterday that I’d been laughing about girls with Bobby, getting drunk in the middle of the day, stealing cars and cutting them up for cash. Life had been so exciting, with no consequences to speak of.
Silently, I rose from the bed and limped my way out of the bedroom. Heading out into the hallway, I began a slow survey of the rest of the house. I checked in on my kids. They were asleep. As I gazed down at my son, I wondered rather guiltily how he and Chandler would have gotten along if my crash had been fatal. They would have survived, of course. But they would have gone through terrible grief and hardship.
Life just got a lot harder as you got older, that’s what I was learning. It got more complicated, more difficult to understand. I cherished Sandy, I really did. She felt like the love of my life, and she was quickly becoming a mom to my kids. The idea of finding a woman I thought more highly of was laughable. I wanted to honor her by retreading my life in a way that she approved of, and in a way that made her feel proud.
But at that moment, alone in the house at night all by myself, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of having somehow transformed into a grown-up, a father to three kids, the husband to one of the most famous, impossibly perfect women in the world. It was a weakness welling up inside of me, no doubt about it. But sometimes I just wished I could find a way to make it all disappear.
16
We received the news in the summer of 2008: Janine was headed to jail.
“They got her on tax evasion,” I told Sandy. “I knew right from the start that she was going to get knocked one day.”
My ex-wife owed the IRS several hundred thousand dollars in back taxes. I’d been sending Janine fifteen grand a month ever since we’d divorced, but apparently, she’d never made much effort to pay back the government the considerable debt she owed them. Instead, she’d purchased two new cars and put a down payment on a $647,000 home. Janine wasn’t going to turn it around until someone made her. She was just going to continue to fuel her self-destructive habits and lifestyle.
“That’s pretty frightening,” Sandy said.
“I know,” I said. “I can’t believe she’s been raising my daughter all this time. I don’t even want to think about it. But there’s a silver lining.”
“Really? And what’s that?”
“If she really does goes to prison, I’m going to get custody for sure.